The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor(s), to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
With the advent of 3G and 4G technology, which utilize the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) channel access method, receivers of wireless devices are kept in an active mode at all times. This means that the receiver must be capable of handling a large, dynamic range of input signals (e.g., wideband receivers). To cope with the dynamic range of signals, front end processing acts on the received radio frequency (RF) signal to increase (or decrease) the strength of the signal into an intermediate range that can be handled by digital signal processing components downstream. Because of the variability of the strength of the input signal, and because of noise considerations, front end processors typically include a plurality of amplifier stages that can be selected according to the strength of the input signal to amplify (or attenuate) the input signal as needed.